Verne Gay

Tom Long

As harrowing, dark and bloody as the premiere episodes are, and as open as the show’s direction seems to be, the comparisons [to Game of Thrones,” “Sons,” “Deadwood,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Walking Dead”] seem apt. This Bastard rocks.

Tim Goodman

The ensemble cast is large and strong and littered with enough character intricacies to fuel long-tailed story arcs. And while there’s much to set up, the series moves briskly enough (and with enough action to liven up the detailed story setups) that everything gains clarity by the end of the second episode.

Hank Stuever

The double-episode premiere drags like it has all the time in the world, leaving a viewer time to wonder if he or she has much room left for another show with swords, beheadings and rapey pillagings. But Sutter is skilled at balancing emotion and gore, and it isn’t long before you start to believe in this place and these people.

Jeff Korbelik

David Wiegand

The series is not for the squeamish. But, as with “Game of Thrones,” the violence is not gratuitous but rather a necessary tool in telling the story. The Bastard Executioner not only hits the mark, it sets the bar very high for the rest of the fall season.

Ellen Gray

"Sons of Anarchy's" outlaw motorcycle-gang members, while splendidly portrayed, never struck me as particularly sympathetic. No, not even the cute one with the Hamlet complex. But transplant all that blood-soaked angst to early 14th-century Wales, as "Sons" creator Kurt Sutter has in his new drama for FX, The Bastard Executioner, and it's easier to find old-fashioned romance in a man compelled to do horrific things to prevent even worse horrors.

Mark Dawidziak

The first hour of FX's The Bastard Executioner is a bit of a slog.... Just when you're thinking the battle is lost, Sutter goes all medieval on us and pulls everything together in a fiercely compelling manner. Patience is rewarded, and The Bastard Executioner suddenly becomes every bit as addictive as it is intriguing.

Bruce Fretts

The Bastard Executioner may need time to sharpen its storytelling. But by the second episode, when Brattle is ordered to give a rebellious 16-year-old tomboy the ax and Sagal’s sorceress yanks a demonic snake from the throat of a dismembered corpse, it’s already starting to exhibit signs of developing into a bloody good show.

Joshua Alston

By the end of the third installment, Executioner has begun to find a rhythm, or at least demonstrate what its episodic storytelling looks like. But getting there requires committing to a two-hour pilot that shouldn’t be nearly as dull as it is given the amount of blood spilled.

Glenn Garvin

Amber Dowling

This resulting premiere is an offering that feels haphazardly stitched together--the audience often left pondering the relevance of each scene. By Episode 3 that pace and journey shift to relevant and thoughtful, but it sure is an exhaustive journey to finally get there.

Tirdad Derakhshani

Even though the first two installments seem like the unfocused, muddled ramblings of a drunken storyteller, The Bastard Executioner eventually takes us to a place so dark, shocking, and surprising that one feels compelled to keep watching.

Rob Owen

Because it’s set in such an alien world and jumps around a lot introducing its myriad characters of assorted social classes while also setting in motion multiple plots, The Bastard Executioner gets off to a messy start. (When press notes offer more details on the many bearded and long-haired look-alike characters than the show itself, you know there’s too much going on in a series, and clarity has been sacrificed.) But Bastard Executioner improves as it goes. The question is whether viewers will stick with it.

David Hinckley

In the broader picture, happily, The Bastard Executioner doesn’t require any extensive knowledge of British or Welsh history. It may require some patience to understand where it’s going and start heading toward the payoff.

Brian Tallerico

After three episodes, this show is on a razor’s edge. It could easily tip into a parody of itself, as the writing isn’t strong enough to get us through long passages of dialogue like in “Game of Thrones”. And it needs to stop taking itself so seriously. Have some fun with it.

Isaac Feldberg

Sutter clearly believes in dropping audiences in the middle of the action, and so The Bastard Executioner doesn’t offer much by way of lifelines. It’s committed to its visual nastiness maybe even more than its overarching plot--and the pilot suffers for it, clunking from scene to scene with all the grace of a knight in chainmail armor.

Mary McNamara

By the end of the third episode (the premiere will include the first two), it is still not clear what The Bastard Executioner is about. It has many promising elements: evocative locations, a potentially fascinating time period (hey, everyone, the Black Death looms!) and a very strong cast (Matthew Rhys plays a rebel leader, and Timothy Murphy is a priest reminiscent of Derek Jacobi's "Cadfael")

Vicki Hyman

Sutter's taste for chewy dialogue works well ("Make this a sight for deep memory," instructs Baron Ventris (Brian F. O'Byrne) before a slaughter, and his minions do). But Brattle and his band of rebels are frustratingly one-dimensional; the only character who comes to life is Stephen Moyer's Milus Corbett, the Baron's scheming chamberlain.

Jeff Jensen

I wish the storytelling was ambitious as the concept. The aesthetic is too conventional, the grit not gritty enough. The action is rote, and the depravity ranges from sick to shruggy. The acting needs to go next level, too.

Matthew Gilbert

Sutter has invented a harsh world that, despite its resemblance to “Game of Thrones” and some of TV’s medieval-set series, has its own distinct identity, too, with hallucinogenic visions and twisted characters (including a sheep lover) amid portentous political struggles.... All the Annora and Dark Mute business put me in mind of a show that I definitely should not have been thinking about while watching The Bastard Executioner, namely the cheesy supernatural daytime soap opera “Dark Shadows.”

Mark A. Perigard

Joanne Ostrow

The series is packed with intriguing characters and great performances in a mostly untapped period. If only we could tolerate watching through covered eyes, cringing and fast-forwarding through the goriest scenes, we'd probably be in for a rich and rough drama.

Brian Lowry

Josh Bell

The political machinations, led by True Blood’s Stephen Moyer as a devious chamberlain, are more interesting, especially when they delve into the complex dynamic between the English ruling class and the Welsh peasants. But Sutter seems more interested in severed limbs and mysterious pronouncements (he also gives himself the role of Annora’s disfigured, hooded companion, prone to delivering cryptic dialogue), at least so far.

Alan Sepinwall

Bastard Executioner more or less picks up where "Sons" left off in terms of self-indulgence. The two-hour premiere is technically two episodes aired back-to-back, but with barely enough story to fill one.

Ed Bark

Spencer Kornhaber

The Bastard Executioner feels a bit more like people playing dress up than the best works in its genre should. The only characters to not fall into cliched dichotomies of rag-tag rebels and power-mad gentry are the women--a mystic of unclear purpose and unclear accent, played by Katey Sagal, and a demure but calculating baroness, played with quiet intelligence by Flora Spencer-Longhurst. Outside of them, the intrigue factor is low.

Matt Roush

Matt Zoller Seitz

The images have a tactile richness but are never purely pretty. Unfortunately the script assumes an inherent level of interest in these characters that the dialogue and situations don't do enough to earn.

Ken Tucker

Sara Smith

For its first two hours, every aspect of FX’s new medieval drama is obscene, from the needlessly degrading sex scenes to the gleeful throat-slitting. Its most heinous offense is burying its promising premise in a pile of corpses before a talented cast can find the story’s pulse.

Maureen Ryan

Chris Cabin

The series is marked by a half-hearted view of faith, lacking in anything even approaching insight, which is damning given that destiny (Sagal's mystic sees Brattle's place in a shifting political and spiritual landscape) is one of the central ideas at play here.

Willa Paskin

Best Websites 2017, Best Websites To Find Apartments, Best Websites To Watch Anime, Best Websites To Find Jobs, Best Websites 2016, Best Websites For Free Movies, Best Websites For Photographers, Best Websites For Used Cars, Best Websites For Cheap Flights, Best Websites For Dresses, Best Websites Awards, Best Websites A Programmer Should Visit, Best Websites About Books, Best Websites About Movies, Best Websites About Money, Best Websites About Design, Best Websites Aasl, Best Websites About Music, Best Websites About Food, Best Websites Airfare, Best Websites Builder, Best Websites Bored, Best Websites By Design, Best Websites Built With Squarespace, Best Websites Buzzfeed, Best Websites By Category, Best Websites Booking Flights, Best Websites Buy Used Cars, Best Websites Built With WordPress, Best Websites Besides Reddit, Best Websites Created With WordPress, Best Websites Cheap Flights, Best Websites Created With Wix, Best Websites Creators, Best Websites Cheap Hotels, Best Websites Corporate, Best Websites Cheap Perfume, Best Websites Cheap Clothes, Best Websites Commercial Real Estate, Best Websites Colors, Best Websites Design, Best Websites Design 2017, Best Websites Design 2016, Best Websites Design Awards, Best Websites Designed With Squarespace, Best Websites Data Visualization, Best Websites Design In The World, Best Websites Design Templates, Best Websites Developers, Best Websites Download Music, Best Websites Ever, Best Websites Ever Made, Best Websites Examples, Best Websites Education, Best Websites Ecommerce, Best Websites Ever Created, Best Websites Everyone Should Know, Best Websites Earn Money Online, Best Websites Educational Articles, Best Websites Entertainment, Best Websites For Free Movies, Best Websites For Photographers, Best Websites For Used Cars, Best Websites For Cheap Flights, Best Websites For Dresses, Best Websites For Teachers, Best Websites For Hotels, Best Websites For Kids, Best Websites For Men, Best Websites For Artists, Best Websites Games, Best Websites Gta 5, Best Websites Graphic Design, Best Websites Gallery, Best Websites Github, Best Websites Globally, Best Websites Games Online, Best Websites Games Download Free, Best Websites Gifts, Best Websites Graphic Design Portfolio, Best Websites Hotels, Best Websites Homes For Sale, Best Websites Hubspot, Best Websites Html5, Best Websites Hosting, Best Websites Hotel Deals, Best Websites House Hunting, Best Websites Hr Professionals, Best Websites Home Page, Best Websites Html, Best Websites In The World, Best Websites In 2017, Best Websites If You’re Bored, Best Websites Ideas, Best Websites In Gta 5, Best Websites International Flights, Best Websites In 2016, Best Websites Internet, Best Websites In Spanish, Best Websites In America, Best Websites Job Search, Best Websites Jewelry, Best Websites Javascript, Best Websites Joomla, Best Websites Jquery, Best Websites Jordan Shoes, Best Websites Jobs Uk, Best Websites Japan, Best Websites Jewellery, Best Websites Java, Best Websites Korean Drama, Best Websites Kenya, Best Websites Knowledge, Best Websites Kill Time, Best Websites Kindergarten, Best Knitting Websites, Best Karaoke Websites Free, Best Knife Websites, Best Kitchen Websites, Best Karaoke Websites, Best Websites Like Airbnb, Best Websites Like Ebay, Best Websites List, Best Websites Like Buzzfeed, Best Websites Like Solarmovie, Best Websites Like Youtube, Best Websites Like Wish, Best Websites Layouts, Best Websites Like G2a, Best Websites Learning Programming, Best Websites Made With Squarespace, Best Websites Made With WordPress, Best Websites Made With Wix, Best Websites Movies Online, Best Websites Made, Best Websites Made With Weebly, Best Websites Made With Google Sites, Best Websites Made With Bootstrap, Best Websites Movies, Best Websites Makers, Best Websites News, Best Websites Names, Best Websites No One Knows About Reddit, Best Websites No One Knows About, Best Websites Non Profit Organizations, Best Websites Navigation, Best Websites Nyc Apartment Rental, Best Websites Nz, Best Websites Names List, Best Websites Of 2017, Best Websites On The Internet, Best Websites Of 2016, Best Websites On Tor, Best Websites On The Internet 2017, Best Websites On The Dark Web, Best Websites On Gta 5, Best Websites Of The 90s, Best Websites Of The Year, Best Websites Of 2015, Best Websites Platforms, Best Websites Productivity, Best Websites Photography, Best Websites Personal Finance, Best Websites Portfolio, Best Websites Personal, Best Websites Parallax, Best Websites Pages, Best Websites Professional Services, Best Websites Programmer Should Visit, Best Websites Quora, Best Websites Quotes, Best Websites Qualities, Best Quiz Websites, Best Quilting Websites, Best Quote Websites Ever, Best Quizzing Websites, Best Quran Websites, Best Quirky Websites, Best Qtp Websites, Best Websites Reddit, Best Websites Rental Homes, Best Websites Real Estate, Best Websites Ranking, Best Websites Restaurants, Best Websites Right Now, Best Websites Retail, Best Websites Responsive, Best Websites Review, Best Websites Ruby On Rails, Best Websites Squarespace, Best Websites Streaming Movies, Best Websites Shopping Online, Best Websites Services, Best Websites Sell Clothes, Best Websites Sports, Best Websites Streaming, Best Websites Samples, Best Websites South Africa, Best Websites Small Business, Best Websites To Find Apartments, Best Websites To Watch Anime, Best Websites To Find Jobs, Best Websites To Book Flights, Best Websites To Book Hotels, Best Websites To Stream Movies, Best Websites To Learn Coding, Best Websites To Watch Tv Shows For Free, Best Websites To Buy Shoes, Best Websites To Buy Used Cars, Best Websites Used Cars, Best Websites Ux, Best Websites Using WordPress, Best Websites Using Video, Best Websites Using Wix, Best Websites Ui, Best Websites User Experience, Best Websites Using Squarespace, Best Websites Using Divi Theme, Best Websites Using Shopify, Best Websites Visually, Best Websites Vacation Packages, Best Websites Video Background, Best Websites Video Download, Best Websites Video, Best Websites Vocabulary Building, Best Websites Vacation Rentals, Best Websites Visit Daily, Best Websites Vacation Deals, Best Websites Visit, Best Websites When Bored, Best Websites When Bored At Work, Best Websites With Video, Best Websites When High, Best Websites When You Are Bored, Best Websites With Games, Best Websites With Animation, Best Websites With Social Media Integration, Best Websites With Video Backgrounds, Best Websites With Blogs, Best Websites You Don’t Know About, Best Websites Youtube, Best Websites You’ve Never Heard Of, Best Websites You Must See, Best Websites You Haven’t Heard Of, Best Websites Yahoo Answers, Best Websites Yoga, Best Websites Young Entrepreneurs, Best Yoga Websites 2015, Best Yarn Websites, Best Zoo Websites, Best Zen Websites, Best Zenfolio Websites, Best Zodiac Websites, Best Zoology Websites, Best Zombie Websites, Best Zimbabwean Websites, Best Zumba Websites, Best Zentangle Websites, Best Zine Websites